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An anonymous reader writes "Anna G. Eshoo, a California Democrat representing parts of Silicon Valley, has written an op-ed defending net neutrality and pushing the administration to take more steps to speed up US broadband. From the article: 'A climate of openness and innovation has been the hallmark of the Internet. A decade ago, it's what allowed a startup named Google to compete with better-funded, less technologically advanced competitors. Today, Congress has the responsibility to preserve this climate for the next Google, and for the consumers and the economy that will benefit from its success.'"

So, Ms. Eschoo has written an op-ed...or as I like to call it these days, "hard news reporting.":-/ At least she's on the right side of this issue, unlike so many others. In other news, I wonder if Lieberman has changed his mind on the web kill bill in the wake of Egypt.

with the occupant of the White House acting AGAINST net neutrality, this is nothing more than lip service as any meaningful bill has zero chance of reaching the White House, and even if by some wild chance that it does, it has little chance of being signed.

Yes, and Eshoo knows it. She's the Representative from Intel, HP, and Cisco, and what they want, she does. So any pretense from her of net neutrality is just a PR pose to win her votes. I loathe her phoniness. She supports extensive use of H1-Bs to replace American labor, because that's what her corporate hands-up-the-ass want. I wrote to her and her office responded with incorrect statistics directly contradicting the Dept of Labor, and explaining why it was so vitally necessary to hire Indian engineers.

Assuming for the moment that both houses of congress were to compose and pass their respective iterations of such a bill, and the president were to veto it as you predict, you forget that congress can still override that veto if that bill has enough support. Granted, it practically takes an act of G*d for such a thing to occur, but the president does not, and never has had, the last word on legislation passed across his desk. As broken as our system is, checks-and-balances are still in place.

To begin talking about Net Neutrality, it helps to clarify what the internet is. It’s simply data sent via TCP/IP (the protocol for sending data through routers). Some people host web sites, others connect to their company e-mail, others do other things - it’s all the internet.

Understanding that the internet is just a connection using TCP/IP, then Net Neutrality is simple, too. Net Neutrality simply means that your ISP may not interfere with the internet. They may not censor your packets (the data that is sent via TCP/IP). This means they can’t censor your news, keep you off of Skype, or otherwise interfere with your TCP/IP communications.

Any compromise on this is wrong for two reasons: 1) Your ISP should not have the right to interfere with your free speech, and 2) ISPs should not be able to tax the value creation of the media industry.

ISPs should not be able to interfere with consumer access to media companies, nor tax those companies for access to consumers. ISPs should not be able to interfere with our speech or block our access to the speech of others.

ISPs are in the business of providing internet access, but they don't own the internet; any attempts to eliminate net neutrality would violate our consumer rights and hurt the economy.

Net neutrality is a government regulation insomuch as free speech is a regulation that speech is regulated to be free. Net neutrality is merely forcing the Internet to be free and unbiased. Politicians (both liberal and conservative) like to paint a picture of net neutrality as a regulation, which is as silly as the Internet as a bunch of tubes.

The irony is they are technically correct, but practically wrong, and the reason for the disconnect is that they have over the past couple centuries abused the word 'regulation' till it's almost unrecognisable.

"Force" and "free" don't belong together. I think it would be better to describe it as a Monopoly (comcast, verizon, et al) that has abused its powers over the customers, and therefore the government has stepped in to regulate the corporate tyrant. It's not ideal nor is it free, but it works.

ISPs are in the business of providing internet access, but they don't own the internet; any attempts to eliminate net neutrality would violate our consumer rights and hurt the economy.

They own and control the access points. Many also own the higher level links. Some even own vast chunks of the content flowing across it.. So yes, in effect they do 'own the internet'.

But i do agree they need to be slapped down before things get more out of hand. In today's society the internet is more like a public utility, much like electricity became long ago, and should be treated as such. Not really 'required' for life, but modern life without it would be difficult at best.

ISPs are in the business of providing internet access, but they don't own the internet; any attempts to eliminate net neutrality would violate our consumer rights and hurt the economy.

They own and control the access points. Many also own the higher level links. Some even own vast chunks of the content flowing across it.. So yes, in effect they do 'own the internet'.

But i do agree they need to be slapped down before things get more out of hand. In today's society the internet is more like a public utility, much like electricity became long ago, and should be treated as such. Not really 'required' for life, but modern life without it would be difficult at best.

Exactly, things that require vast infrastructure, like roads, water, gas, electricity, communications all require antitrust regulation (which imo net neutrality is a type of) because the barrier to entry is so vast. Regulation is justified and infringes no ones property rights, because these things are usually built on vast tracts of public land using public funds.

ISPs are a utility, like a power company. A power company cannot choose to provide power to your branded toaster over a cheap Chinese 'counterfeit' toaster. Yet in the world of ISPs, this is what they want to do.

Enough is enough. ISPs forward packets to users. Meter the packets, heck, even limit the rate of packets to users that are using too many resources! But DO NOT tell me that one packet is better than another - ALL packets are created of equal bits and should be treated as such. Classification of whic

If an ISP starts charging for access to users / sites, then they should become responsible for those users/ data transmitted, remove the safe harbor provisions in the DCMA etc, that would stop a lot of them in the their tracks outright.

Some interference may not be a bad thing. If I'm using Skype, I wouldn't mind if the ISP gave my packets priority over someone's email. Realtime audio and video is a lot more time sensitive and if someone has to wait a few extra milliseconds for their email, I don't think that they would notice or even care.

I don't think there's anything wrong with prioritizing certain types of traffic, especially if it would improve service quality for most of the end users. Where I would draw the line is when they start to differentiate based on who's providing the packets or where they're going. For example, you can prioritize streaming video, but you can't prioritize YouTube ahead of Netflix.

Depending how interference is defined, what's permissible under net neutrality could vary widely.

If I'm using Skype, I wouldn't mind if the ISP gave my packets priority over someone's email.

That would have been a better statement if you'd said you don't mind your ISP giving someone else's Skype call priority over your email. 'Cause I see no reason why you would mind your packets getting pushed up the queue (unless you disagreed with the principle of the thing).

Maybe if they allowed packets to set a flag to volunteer to be given lower priority, then there's no way to game the system into giving your higher priority than the default "everyone is equal" priority.

Except then if that caught on in a useful way, some ass would pop up and not follow the norm, so that their massive downloads seemed faster than everyone else because they were still asking for the same priority as VoIP, while everyone else was voluntarily taking the slow lane.

That there is the reason we can't have nice things like consumer-friendly QoS; someone, somewhere, will always be trying to abuse it.

Or they could guarantee everybody a certain amount of priority packets to do with as they please. If you want to use them for skype you could, if I want to use them for something stupid, I'd be free to do that. Of course the problem with that is that it would reduce the amount of bandwidth that they could oversell by.

I've made this point before [slashdot.org] (seems more recent than 2009... where did the time go...?), but there's no reason to give an infinite amount of high-priority bandwidth to anyone. That is to say, customers could promote/demote their packets based on whatever criteria they choose, but once the monthly quota of high-priority data has been reached, everything is auto-demoted to whatever level is appropriate to ensure minimal interference to those who are playing fairly.

That would be easy...if only a given person's packets only ever traversed a single company's network.

But that's not the Internet.

To reach practically anywhere your packets will be carried by a half dozen or more independently owned and operated networks. How does each network track your specific bandwidth allocation to know when they should drop your priority? Why should they care anyway, they aren't your direct ISP? And we haven't even gotten into tracking this with non-static IPs that are most frequent

Obviously there are implementation hurdles, and those may be high enough that it's not worth the effort (or cost). But, if such a scheme were implemented, your ISP might track your ratio, but subsequent networks would track the ratio of your ISP, or the backbone connections, etc. So you'd need some sort of wide-scale peering agreement that the network will tolerate X% of high priority packets, and that X applies to all users, and everyone on the network can effectively enforce that. You may be right thou

Except then if that caught on in a useful way, some ass would pop up and not follow the norm, so that their massive downloads seemed faster than everyone else because they were still asking for the same priority as VoIP, while everyone else was voluntarily taking the slow lane.

This really isn't all that hard. Make three traffic queues: the normal one that everyone uses by default, a high-priority queue with low bandwidth, and a low-priority queue with high bandwidth. Let that Skype call get near-real-time performance, up to 64Kbps.

Of course, most of this is academic because you can't easily shape inbound traffic, and the received:sent ratio for most home users is pretty darn high.

Some interference may not be a bad thing. If I'm using Skype, I wouldn't mind if the ISP gave my packets priority over someone's email. Realtime audio and video is a lot more time sensitive and if someone has to wait a few extra milliseconds for their email, I don't think that they would notice or even care.

Indeed. I would prefer to delay web page accesses by 0.1 seconds so that others' VOIP works without interruption, as long as they do the same so that my VOIP works without interruption as well. So if my

Perhaps we should be trying to set some kind of standard for how much packet delay is acceptable... because I'm okay with your skype being prioritized over my email but not over my realtime gaming. Essentially only services known to not be lag-sensitive can be delayed. Seems like it's a bad idea. So perhaps instead we should NEVER use QoS to prioritize YOUR packets over MINE (or vice-versa) and instead only use QoS to prioritize YOUR skype packets over YOUR email packets, and otherwise queue round-robin by

I think some fraction of your nominal connection speed should be guaranteed to you. From there, it is up to you what to flag as high priority (ie what should use your guaranteed bandwidth). Any high-priority stuff over that goes ahead of low-priority stuff from your neighbors, but is overall at the mercy of the current demand. This kind of discourages people from flagging everything high-priority, as it means they have no control over what goes through their guaranteed connection.

If I was a completely corrupt government functionary, I would at least have an eye towards utilizing disruptions in the market and replacement of key players for my own advancement. Static power relations goes for the people above me too. And I can only be lucky/healthy/alive for so long.

It's like the Gold Rush in California or Alaska. They figure, that if the Internet is open and free, that will cut into their profits. So anyone with money and influence looking to make a buck off the Internet will contact their "friends" in Washington. They want to control the flow of information. Just look at Rupert Murdoch's antics to see what I mean.

"People on this Internet thingie are stealing my news content . . . and not paying for it!"

Damn that's a depressing wiki article. How much funding do these type of political nutjobs get? It's a non-profit, right? Where would I go to take a look at their books?

Also, back in 08 I had a discussion with a republican friend. He mentioned how Obama didn't take public funds. I shot back that republicans were a lot better at funneling money around campaign finance laws. This here would be a prime example of that. A little on the crazy side, but it still fits the bill.

We all payed for the physical lines and everything needed to run the internet one way or another. How much has our government "Us" given to theses cable company to run new lines upgrade lines. If we have subsidized theses company's in any way they shouldn't get full say on who can do what on the internet because they really don't "Own" the internet, we all do because we have all payed.

First off, it's "paid", not payed. and it's "companies", not company's.

Secondly, chances are the only way you paid for these lines via the government was the government allowing near-monopolies in the telephony market. In America, the infrastructure was built by the companies - the original being Ma Bell [wikipedia.org]. Subsequent upgrades are also courtesy of the telecoms and ISPs.

I keep hearing about Broadband adoption monies in the various stimulus plans, so the answer is the government (us) is taking our money (they don't have any of their own) and giving it to broadband companies to run miles and miles of fiber and coax into under-served neighborhoods that were never economically viable for the cable companies/ISPs (if they were, they would have expanded into them already, unless they knew if they dragged their feet they could get free/cheap government monies to help reduce the c

But as I understand Net Neutrality, the groups that support it don't want ISP to be able to charge higher fees for faster/better access to their networks, right? If so, how does that make other connections slower? It's like arguing that Priority Mail service makes First Class mail slower.

Just because something faster exists, it doesn't make everything else slower.

Now, making a competitors packets actually travel slower through your network IS wrong, and I get that, but everytime I hear the argument expresse

Priority Mail is via the USPS in the US, which is run by the federal government. The problem is that sites with deep pockets would have a competitive advantage over sites which couldn't afford to pay the ransom. As a result sites like Youtube and Flikr would have an advantage over sites that wish to compete with them in the future because those sites would be slower to load.

Additionally, there's no guarantee that sites would be able to get sufficient bandwidth as ISPs are unlikely to be willing to spend mon

I'm already paying Comcast for a certain level of service (not that they actually provide anything close to what's advertised), but they'd also want someone like Netflix to pay to send their data to me (which is what *I'm* paying Comcast for). In a better functioning market, Comcast would have an incentive to get the fastest possible connection to Netflix so that I'm a happy Comcast customer with great connectivity to Netflix. Since they're a near monopoly (slower DSL is the only other option I have), they

But as I understand Net Neutrality, the groups that support it don't want ISP to be able to charge higher fees for faster/better access to their networks, right? If so, how does that make other connections slower? It's like arguing that Priority Mail service makes First Class mail slower.

Consider this analogy: You're shopping in a store, and step into a line to check out. Such lines are normally strictly FIFO (First In, First Out), so the amount of time required for you to reach the register is based solely on how long it takes the people ahead of you to check out.

Now, add in a special policy of the store, where certain customers have "priority checkout", and are allowed to cut into the line ahead of anyone already in line. Each time such a customer cuts into the line, it adds to the amo

But as I understand Net Neutrality, the groups that support it don't want ISP to be able to charge higher fees for faster/better access to their networks, right? If so, how does that make other connections slower? It's like arguing that Priority Mail service makes First Class mail slower.

If you want to pay the USPS extra for priority mail to Britain, go ahead. This is between you and your postal office. If I want have mail delivered to me hourly, that's between me and my postal office. I shouldn't have to deal with your postal service, nor should you have to deal with mine. There should be no preferred service for Japan. That's what Net Neutrality is about.

So yes, the only ISP allowed to sell faster service to Google is Google's ISP. Not mine, nor yours. If my ISP wants extra money to impro

Because, to extend your analogy rather badly, there's only so much room in the mail van and if it's full of Priority Mail then your First Class stuff will have to wait for the next van - and don't make the naive assumption that they'll use all that Priority Mail money to buy more vans, because we all know that won't happen.

It's like arguing that Priority Mail service makes First Class mail slower.

There's a fallacy brought about by someone who hasn't seen their first class mail getting slower. The problem is one of finite resources and delay in transmission. The post office is for want of a better description over resourced for the load of priority mail they are sending. The priority mail doesn't arrive any faster between routes, and there's not enough of it to jump the queue at the endpoints.

Now scale it up. Assume that instead of 1 package in 100, 10 packages are now priority mail. The backlog

The real fight, not the cosmetic fight over ISPs censoring content which they can't do anyways, is over the government setting peering and interconnect prices even though this has always been set by the free market. In this case, the hardline Net Neutrality proponents want to set ISP peering rates to zero, or at least heavily regulated by the ISPs. The FCC tried to compromise by putting out incoherent regulations that would outlaw paid prioritization but not outlaw paid peering which are essentially the s

not the cosmetic fight over ISPs censoring content which they can't do anyways

Sure they could, either by intercepting DNS requests for a site and returning a bogus IP, or by dropping packets too or from some IP address. Both of those would be quite simple to pull off if you're in control of the routers in between the clients and the site you're trying to censor. Would it take effort? Yes, but not all that much.

Remember what this whole fight started over: SBC went to Google and basically said "Nice website you have there, it would be a shame if something were to happen to it."

I hear many different definitions of net neutrality but it seems to come down to the internet should be free. That's all well and good but I also realize that it just ain't the way it works. I pay Cox a significant amount of money for internet access. Everyone who runs a connection to my house is looking for money. I believe Cox also charges if you go over a certain useage level. Soi we don't have net neutrality now and never have had. So will someone please tell me what the phrase really means?

Freedom is the only answer. Freedom is what made Google great. The ONLY thing the government is capable of doing is enacting force, which obviously takes someones freedom away. How can taking away freedom help the internet? US Government, stay out of my internet!

Whether or not the actions proposed by the FCC are good and beneficial to the market, both the Congress and the Judiciary specifically instructed the FCC that it was not within it's authority to do it. It is legally allowed only to do that which Congress says it can, by law, passed by congress. It is proceeding with the rules, ignoring Congress and Judges. The Executive branch is acting outside the law, in this matter, thumbing it's nose at the other two branches, which have told it not to.

The internet has flourished precisely because the government regulators (aka nannies) have stayed out of it.

It has flourished because all the major players considered that neutrality was a good idea and just went along with it, making government involvement unnecessary. Now the major players believe that neutrality is no longer in their business interests.

The internet is going to be regulated. The only question is to what degree and by who.

Since when? Have there been sites you could not access? I haven't noticed ANY change in how my ISP acts now, or five years ago, or even back in the beginning (1993).

It didn't yet get to the point where it would be up in your face, such as pay to access certain websites. But major US ISPs have already stated that they'd like to see e.g. Google pay extra to have their content delivered to end user at the same speed as everyone else's, rather than being throttled down. The way it reflects upon you as a user is that Google might no longer be able to afford to offer some services for free that it does today, and there will be more ads on others.

I'm sorry, I would have loved to read your comment, but I wasn't able to. Comcast had throttled the speed at which your comment loaded, since its content was determined to not be in the best interest of Comcast-NBC. Maybe next time say something about 30rock or Outsourced at the end of your comment so it loads a little faster for me please.

What are you smoking? The internet flourished specifically because of regulation. Look up some of the history of reciprocal comp for example, or the tarifs before cable/dsl were exempted from them, PSCs etc.

To be frank, you have no idea what you're talking about. This isn't about the government trying to control the internet, it's about the government telling the ISPs to STOP trying to control the internet. It takes extra equipment, extra staff, extra planning to control whos packets get which priority and keep track of billing. All of this will require and entirely new divisions inside ISPs. It's much simpler to just leave everything alone and stop dinking around with traffic shaping. The ISPs have been lying to and defrauding their customers about what bandwidth they can expect with their given package for about a decade. With the advent of recent high bandwidth services such as Netflix, youtube, etc... it's becoming increasing obvious to the average internet user that "something" is wrong. ISPs are trying to blame their customers or the services their customers are trying to use. But the fact of the matter is, the formula is fairly simple, If they are selling you 5mb/s service, you should be able to get that speed at 6pm on a Saturday night. But we all know how unlikely that really is. ISPs need to upgrade their infrastructure and are instead are trying to block their customers from accessing sites that would allow them to use the service they paid for.

To be frank, how can you be so blind, when you have all this talk of the government wanting a kill switch? and you willing give them more power??? And look at what happened in egypt.

BTW, if corporations have been lying and committing fraud, we already have laws about that sort of thing.

FCC gets net neutrality, how long until they need to start policing the content? We already have enough of that bs to deal with. The net has been run by corporations for quite awhile, and there's no major problems with it,

To be frank, how can you be so blind, when you have all this talk of the government wanting a kill switch? and you willing give them more power??? And look at what happened in egypt.

BTW, if corporations have been lying and committing fraud, we already have laws about that sort of thing.

Joe Frickin' Lieberman's internet kill switch is a completely separate bill from Net Neutrality regulation. One is a mandate that ISPs essentially hand control of the internet over to a government military organization; the other is a series of regulations forbidding companies from shaping their customers' internet traffic to pad their own profits. In fact, they're about as different as a military spending bill is from civil rights legislation; the only thing they have in common is that they both apply to t

So if some corporation wants to steal money from you, but some other department, wants to legit business, you're gonna do business with them? I imagine not, why would the government be any different?

Oh good, another slippery slope fallacy.

Oh, it's a fallacy? you think, if you hand them power they'll not demand more? are you serious? it's not a fallacy it's a fact. "The natural progress of things is liberty to yield and government gain ground" ~ Thomas Jefferson.

Well I'm not buying it. Net Neutrality is a worthy goal

freedom is worthy goal. Control is not. Doesn't matter that it's only control of

So if some corporation wants to steal money from you, but some other department, wants to legit business, you're gonna do business with them? I imagine not, why would the government be any different?

Because a corporation, even a publicly-owned one, is a dictatorship. The US government is a representative democratic republic, meaning that at any one time there will be many different people making decisions, some of which you can agree with, others which you may not. Saying that you don't want to do business with the entire government based on the views or actions of a small section of it is like saying that you refuse to do business with anyone listed on the New York Stock Exchange because Microsoft scr

Because a corporation, even a publicly-owned one, is a dictatorship. The US government is a representative democratic republic, meaning that at any one time there will be many different people making decisions, some of which you can agree with, others which you may not.

for the purposes of this argument, that's huge distinction without a difference. You could swap 'corporation' and 'us government' in your sentences and it changes nothing. And furthermore, you think congress doesn't have influence over the FCC? you think the FCC wouldn't cave, when think of the children types are whining about something?

Saying that you don't want to do business with the entire government based on the views or actions of a small section of it is like saying that you refuse to do business with anyone listed on the New York Stock Exchange because Microsoft screwed you over once.

the NYSE and MS are very different entities. different parts of the federal government, not quite so much.

Exactly, which is why I support Net Neutrality and not an internet kill switch.

The Internet was born from the government and has always existed under regulations

That's true, to an extent. But the reality is, the internet has been pretty much unregulated.

Making some changes to those regulations to ensure that the large ISPs that control the infrastructure don't start making moves to line their pockets at everyone else's expense, just because they can, is not a bad thing

It's a very bad thing. Just like price controls are bad. just like communism is bad. What is good, is this thing call freedom. Which means freedom for everyone, even those you don't like.

It's not giving the government more control over the Internet.

They get the power to enforce 'fairness', and that's not giving them power?

It's telling those ISPs that they don't have the right to implement their own regulations over what can be sent over the net and at what speeds, just to generate more revenue for themselves.

Why shouldn't they be able to? because you don't like it? I don't like the fact a porsche costs too much money, so let's regulate them too. And btw,

That's true, to an extent. But the reality is, the internet has been pretty much unregulated.

Just put the period after the word "true" and you'd have it right. As it stands, you're wrong.

It's a very bad thing. Just like price controls are bad. just like communism is bad. What is good, is this thing call freedom. Which means freedom for everyone, even those you don't like.

Glenn Beck, is that you? Nice bit of false equivalence there. Regulating ISPs to ensure that they don't start blocking off sections of the net or blocking certain applications or types of traffic, especially in cases where they are a direct competitor or partner to a competitor, is hardly communism. It's not price controls either. It's ensuring that people have freedom to access what they want, which is import

Actually, I find clowns to be extremely creepy. Nannies are generally useful, and sometimes they're hot too! Bureaucrats vary wildly in their usefulness, but generally perform tasks that need to be done. You just have to keep your eye on them, lest they run amok. As for control, I'd actually prefer that it be balanced in the interest of preserving openness. This is in direct conflict with the wishes of the largest ISPs. I obviously can't depend on them to preserve it. They want to lock it down and mo

for children, sure. But I should not be forced into having a nanny to protect myself. I'm an adult.

Bureaucrats vary wildly in their usefulness, but generally perform tasks that need to be done.

Sure, some of their tasks need to be done, but the vast majority of it is just bullshit. If you don't agree, then you better get on explaining how the endless piles of laws is useful, when our constitution was a whole couple of pages long.

As for control, I'd actually prefer that it be balanced in the interest of preserving openness

This idea, of forcing freedom, i think is an oxymoron.

I obviously can't depend on them to preserve it.

as opposed to depending on the government who has enough trouble defending our first and second amendments.

They want to lock it down and monetize every possible avenue they can.

Sure, some of their tasks need to be done, but the vast majority of it is just bullshit. If you don't agree, then you better get on explaining how the endless piles of laws is useful, when our constitution was a whole couple of pages long.

Because the Constitution serves as a boundary for the laws that the government can make. It certainly wasn't intended to be the last word on law in this country. It's vague in many ways and we need specifics. Hence the laws. I'm not claiming that they're all useful. I'm sure there are tons that should be done away with, but someone believe they were useful at some point. I'd be glad to see some serious housecleaning when it comes to the laws on the books already. That doesn't mean that I think they'r

Because the Constitution serves as a boundary for the laws that the government can make. It certainly wasn't intended to be the last word on law in this country. It's vague in many ways and we need specifics. Hence the laws. I'm not claiming that they're all useful. I'm sure there are tons that should be done away with, but someone believe they were useful at some point. I'd be glad to see some serious housecleaning when it comes to the laws on the books already. That doesn't mean that I think they're all u

You put an awful lot of faith in the "free market". History tells us that it doesn't remain free for long without regulation. As a democracy, we should be regulating in the interests of long-term prosperity and the maintenance of the free market. Free markets sound great in principle, as does your idea that we can influence them by choosing what to buy and who to buy from. That idea depends upon people having accurate and complete information upon which to make those decisions. That is so far from the

The next step is the government regulation of speech. Pretty soon they'll be passing a constitutional amendment requiring all public spaces to be "free speech zones" or something. For example, sidewalks will be required to give equal treatment to anyone distributing brochures there, and public parks will be forced to permit crazy people to peddle their political ideologies. It's all about the government exercising control over us, folks.

The Slippery Slope is a fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question. In most cases, there are a series of steps or gradations between one event and the one in question and no reason is given as to why the intervening steps or gradations will simply be bypassed. This "argument" has the following form:

Event X has occurred (or will or might occur).Therefore event Y will inevitably happen.This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because there is no reason to believe that one event must inevitably follow from another without an argument for such a claim. This is especially clear in cases in which there is a significant number of steps or gradations between one event and another.

The Slippery Slope is a fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question. In most cases, there are a series of steps or gradations between one event and the one in question and no reason is given as to why the intervening steps or gradations will simply be bypassed. This "argument" has the following form:

Event X has occurred (or will or might occur).
Therefore event Y will inevitably happen.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because there is no reason to believe that one event must inevitably follow from another without an argument for such a claim. This is especially clear in cases in which there is a significant number of steps or gradations between one event and another.

The Slippery Slope is a Fallacy argument, is a strawman. It mischaracterises the whole point of "slippery slope" as saying X must inevitably produce Y. In fact, what the slippery slope is, is the highlighting that X enables Y. Those that would object to Y, rightly point out that X is therefore dangerous because it makes Y easier to occur. This Slippery Slope Strawman is fallacious because it says Slippery Slope is only valid if X must lead to Y which is incorrect. It is akin to someone taking steps toward a

The nannies are already involved. In most locations cable is the one technologically superior option, and the operators have been granted monopolies by the state (natural monopoly kind of thing).

Alternatives exist, but they have disadvantages. DSL is slower, WiMax/4G/etc. are nice but tend to have caps, Satellite is expensive and has major latency problems, and fiber is costly to deploy so doesn't have significant penetration.

If you consider the cable companies as agents of the state (since their monopolies are sanctioned by the state), then the enforcement of network neutrality is simply a codification of first amendment rights. If you consider them as monopolies than its a pre-emptive description of how anti-trust laws will be applied to ISPs.

I admit, I think Net Neutrality has its issues: it limits innovations in consumer-friendly QOS implementations, and who knows what else. However, I'd rather have that than let the cable companies stop new business models from growing on the internet (I'm sure Comcast is salivating to be able to legally crush Netflix through 'helpful' throttling). A better solution would be to treat internet providers as common carriers and enforce line-sharing, create a real market and let the invisible hand do its thing. But if we can't do that, net neutrality is the best way to keep the internet as the dynamic force it is today.

Fiber Optics are already everywhere. Practically all major telecommunications lines run over FO at one point or another. The key ingredient at this point in time is the hardware to support the FO cabling; FO is cheaper than Copper cable in itself, but legacy hardware is cheaper than FO transceivers.

Services like FiOS take a good step toward bridging the gap and making fiber more easily available to consumers, but they're still only Fiber-to-Curb or Fiber-to-Doorstep. Once there is opportunity for re

The internet has flourished precisely because the government regulators (aka nannies) have stayed out of it. Yes, there were some great engineers earning government paychecks through the military and universities who got it started - but the bureaucrats largely ignored it because they didn't know what it was, or how important it would become.

No good can come from the clowns in Washington "tweaking" the Internet. This is not about "openness" or whatever other word they want to use. This is about exerting top-down control, and the power that comes with that kind of control.

The funny thing is that the same politicians and commentators feeding you those lines are also in support of an "internet kill switch" for the president. They dislike net neutrality, which is government regulation limited to preventing preferential bandwidth based on business interests (maintaining the status quo that's only recently begun to shift), but they love the idea of giving government the power to shut down the internet to prevent political opposition. Oh, to prevent cyber attacks, you say? Excu

She pandered to her constituents, and Slashdot dutifully picked up the story assuming it was a sincere effort to effect change in America...

You want to make the internet "fair" - fine, everyone can only have one datacenter. Why shoud some companies have a multi-site advantage just beciase they are better funded - what about the unfairness of Google being able to buy all the servers they want while my technologically advanced start-up* can not? Their success should be taxed, regulated and restrained to allow